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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26037100">That would be enough</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieTheMouse/pseuds/AnnieTheMouse'>AnnieTheMouse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>le déserteur [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(eventually) - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentions of the rest of the Old Guard &amp; Copley, Minor Character Death, Redemption, or something like it, sad french boi is sad, this is the kind of thing you have to work for</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:15:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26037100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieTheMouse/pseuds/AnnieTheMouse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker drinks, dreams, dies, and eventually finds a mission to help him make it through the decades alone.</p><p>Because in the end, it all comes back to family.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Booker | Sebastien le Livre &amp; Nile Freeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>le déserteur [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944298</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>331</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He spent the first 6 months drunk in France.  Managed to kill himself once with alcohol, something he is cynically proud of given how fast you have to drink to beat out the healing. Days spent drowning in guilt, nights spent drowning with Quynh.</p><p>It doesn’t help. The booze he’s used to try and blur the nightmares doesn’t help enough when he’s not asleep, when all he can see is Andy’s blood, Joe’s anger, Nicky’s face as they make him walk away.  His brain will not stop racing, going over and over those past few days, examining his mistakes.</p><p>Quynh showing up in person instead of his dreams is one hell of a wake up call. Centuries of dying every night in her head have nothing on the first few days in her ‘company’.  She tries to play on his anguish, the abandonment he knows she felt. They felt. He’s drunk but not stupid, so he gives her nothing.</p><p>That she kills him - more than once, more than he wants to count - before she leaves him is not a surprise.  That she leaves him there alone is.  Booker had thought she would use him as a lesson if she couldn’t use him as a weapon, but she is gone before he even understands what she’s after.</p><p>He gets a message to Copley - traceable perhaps, but this is important enough for the risk.  Warns him of what is coming, begs him to warn the others.  If it was any other time he would have gone himself, but they do not want him, and he does not want to face those looks again.  The safest alternative, it seems, is to get away from where any of them can find him.  To do what he can by getting out of the way, by taking him off the table.</p><p>He doesn’t know if Quynh will fear the ocean that was her prison, but it’s worth a shot. Sebastien le Livre abandons his homeland yet again, and heads across the Atlantic.</p><p>Montreal is close enough to France, enough to hurt more and hurt less at the same time. The language is a little more archaic, the phrasing more familiar.  At least he’s not dreaming of Quynh anymore, and can sit in the harbor and stare over the water with his ever-present drink without feeling the endless nights echo at him.</p><p>It should be a blessing, but now there is nothing to distract from his memories of his failure, of the families he’s lost twice over.  This new world looks too much like his old world, too much like France even in this unfamiliar land.  He’s still drowning, he realizes, laughing painfully at himself as he does.  Just with no excuse for it anymore.</p><p>It’s Nile who breaks him from his near constant worry, a message to an account that she wouldn’t know of and that he hadn’t ever expected to see anything but spam in again.  Simple, concise, matter of fact.  A thanks for his warning, a quick note to say all is well, that there is a truce, for now, with Quynh.  For Andy’s sake.</p><p>The fact that Andy has her lost love back, in whatever form a truce means, makes him pathetically happy for her as it tears his heart apart even further. He loves her, and all he’s ever wanted to do is make her happy, so for this to happen is a joy.</p><p>But why, oh why do his elders get blessed when his wife, his love, still lies dead in the cold French ground?</p><p>He doesn’t try and contact Nile back. There are rules, and she doesn’t need more pain from him. For that’s all she’s seen of him Booker knows.  Even when he tried to help, when he’d looked at that bright vibrant soul and tried to save her from his same fate - the look on her face, the pain of that realization is haunting.</p><p>He knows at the end she took his advice, and it broke her. Not as much as if she’d stayed, if they’d died cursing her name while she wept ... but still. </p><p>The postscript to the message is less planned and stilted, and reminds him of her face in that moment. <em>PS. At least we can sleep again. I don’t know how you survived it for so long Booker.</em></p><p>Thinking back, he realizes - maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe he didn’t.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The extra scene hurt, because the fact that Quyhn introduces herself = 200 years of dreaming of a dying woman = gee, I can't imagine where the depression came from. (I mean, I get grumpy when I miss one night of sleep, nevermind tens of thousands)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The problem with getting accustomed to nightmares is when their original source is gone, you make your own.  Since Nile’s email, it has been either her face as he warned her of the danger of contacting her family or his own family dying and screaming at him.  </p><p>Given how brains work, especially brains like his, it’s not a surprise that eventually they cross over and this time Nile’s dying and screaming at him.</p><p>There’s no reason that should hurt more than the first dreams, but oh it does.</p><p>It’s after he wakes from that, stumbling through his room to find a drink, any drink, that he realizes truly what he’s lost with his stupidity.  Not only his stupidity at thinking Merrick would be satisfied with some samples, with him - but at his wretched damned timing, to do this just before there would be another who understood the pain.  Whose memories of their family would be fresh, not faded or lost. Who would have let him not be alone in this, for once.</p><p>Who is now alone in this, because of him. And even then wanted to forgive him, when what he had done was unforgivable.</p><p>‘Fuck’ Booker swears to the empty room, and drops the bottle. </p><p>Usually when his mind gets this bad he finds them a mission, but the only mission he has left is penitence and he was never that good of a Catholic.</p><p>Unless...</p><p>Unless Booker does a mission on his own.</p><p>It’s a tempting thought, but the shake in his hand as he picks up the bottle again probably shows it as a bad choice.  Even if he wasn’t feeling so rough, he’s spent 200 years fighting with someone always at his back, fighting solo makes his gut churn and is a distraction he knows will get him killed.</p><p>Not that getting killed is exactly something that dissuades him.  A moment of oblivion sounds perfect - at the very least it’d clean out his system enough to stop the shakes, for awhile.  But getting caught, risking his secret again so soon, risking them by association - well, that’s enough to stop his thoughts right there.</p><p>Tired eyes flicker closed, but the last scene of his latest nightmare is still painted on the inside of his eyelids, making him shudder and force himself back awake.</p><p>And there, in that split second between awake and asleep the idea comes.  It’s either the smartest idea or the stupidest idea he’s had in a century (and given his recent stupidity there’s a lot to compete with), but at least it’s an idea that’s something other than sitting here, between life and death and not allowing himself either.</p><p>A mission, in its own way.  A mission that doesn’t involve killing and fighting, but does involve other skills he had that the others didn’t. Some of them definitely the less honorable ones that they took advantage of but never learned, that he had thought would make him indispensable.  A mission with a purpose, which is all he’s ever needed.</p><p>He reaches out for his laptop, powers it up and opens it as he takes another swig from the bottle.  His hands tremble though as he tries to type.  Booker pauses, tries again, but he’s too far gone to really be able to get anything done.</p><p>He could be patient, sleep it off or wait it off, let time and his healing take him back to his normal, handleable level of inebriation and sleep deprivation. But sleep seems the worst idea right now, and he needs to get something, anything done. So he drops the bottle, picks up a knife, and heads to the bathroom.  No need to make life hard on housekeeping, after all.</p><p>And if he doesn’t make it back out, well, it’s a win either way now isn’t it?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Admittedly "Implied/Referenced Suicide" probably means something different when you're immortal, but it still don't mean anything good.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Booker adds another line to his notebook, eyes never truly leaving the screen as he does.  He’s not sure why he had taken so well to computers, to hacking.  Well, maybe he is - it’s not like the skillset, at its heart, is all that different from forging.  It’s all about figuring out how things are supposed to be, and faking your way around it.</p>
<p>And he would have learned anything to be useful. He knows that.  He’d seen it as a matter of survival, and if there was anything Sebastian Le Livre was good at, it was surviving - even when he didn’t particularly want to.</p>
<p>Sometimes he wonders if it was also a matter of love, but he shoves that thought down if it dares crop up. Especially now.</p>
<p>Still, it’s not like he’s hacking anything too fancy.  He hadn’t needed to go to any of the more top secret military databases, just the more simple personnel ones, and while he wishes he was surprised that those were less secure than the rest, he’s not really.  It’d been the same in his day - what was the relative importance of mere soldiers?</p>
<p>Not on the individual level. You didn’t hang a man for wanting to live if he mattered.</p>
<p>But it worked.  One home address secured, one next of kin identified.  From there he'd been able to scope out the neighborhood, starting with the ludicrous simplicity of Google Street Maps, working out to find security cameras nearby to use, to peer through.  Currently the cameras he is watching from are in a corner store - no, bodega he thinks the term is. Two cameras, covering the inside and outside of the store.
</p>
<p>Booker hasn’t slept for awhile, but at least this is for a better reason then usual.  His flask still sits beside him, but it’s easy to keep the drinking to his normal levels when he has something to focus on.</p>
<p>His heart rate spikes as he sees her, again.  For the second time in a few days, she steps into the store to pick up a few items, to chat amiably with the old man behind the counter.  “Bonjour Madame Freeman” he whispers silently to himself. He can see the resemblance to her daughter not just in her face, but in the steadiness of her shoulders.  He can see the traces of grief still in the corners of her eyes.</p>
<p>(<em>How long ago had she been told?</em> he wonders. <em>How long ago had Copley spread the lie?</em>)</p>
<p>It’s a brief interaction, but it is a proven point of contact, and now confirmed at least semi-regular one as well.  He thinks he’s seen the brother at least once too, a vaguely familiar face from his quick glance at Nile’s phone screen.</p>
<p>It’s a start.</p>
<p>He continues to watch after she leaves, watches the old man who runs the store totter about, even as he runs another search in another window.  The man obviously aches from his slow movements. In an ideal world he would be doing nothing but sitting, retired, with his family - with his children.  But Booker knows there are so few of those ideal worlds left.</p>
<p>Extra years do not afford the kindness you think they will in your youth.  The world is rarely fair.</p>
<p>He watches on and off until the old man closes up shop, the routine familiar from the past few days of observation.  Door barred, floor swept, before he makes it behind his counter.  Picks up his coffee, and a few scratch cards from behind the till, and heads up the stairs at the back to what Booker assumes his his apartment above.</p>
<p>Still looking for the jackpot.  Booker gets that urge, even if he stopped looking for that years ago. His choices of escape nowadays are more fatalistic.</p>
<p>But it’s definitely more than a start.  He pops open the other window again after lights go dark, looks at the information he has on the old man.  His life, his child &amp; their family living in another city, his careful signup to every online contest that’s big enough to offer what Booker assumes is a way out.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough to spoof one of those sites, those emails.  Easy enough to send out something official looking enough, with a promise of a followup call.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough to offer a little of his considerable savings to get someone else out.</p>
<p>To get himself in.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The title is, probably unsurprisingly, from Hamilton. <em>Stay alive, that would be enough</em> seems appropriate for post-movie Booker,  and if you think I’m not using the title to lean on the imagery of a man at war leaving his wife and son, well - yeah. I’ll take what advantages I can get to supplement my attempts at writing.</p>
<p>It's one of three songs in my Booker-specific section of my Old Guard playlist that will make it into this story, because what am I if not a music addict.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a reason why he was the one that always went to talk to the contact first.  He’s good at it, he’s good at being undercover, seeming unassuming. Hiding who he is seems to come more naturally to him. He’s sure there’s something to be read from that.</p><p>The bodega is barely up for sale an hour before he pounces on it, offering top dollar and whatever time the man needs to move out.  Booker has time, after all. Nothing but time.</p><p>But just as he expected, the old man was as eager as he’d sounded on the phone talking to the ‘contest administrator’, the opportunity to be free of the work that aches his bones and to move to be with his family.</p><p>His contest administrator persona had been blandly american, but as the buyer, Mr. Léonard, he leaves his accent true. Just another immigrant looking for a new life in America, if one from a more unexpected country.</p><p>If he’s going to live here, be here, embed himself into the community, well, he’d rather be as comfortable as he can be.  With his own accent, his real first name, he can let his guard down a little. With his dead wife’s maiden name as his last, he can remind himself of why he’s really here.</p><p>It’s months before it pays off, before he finds himself landing in Chicago, but as the plane lands he feels his body thrum with adrenaline, just as it always did as they came in for a mission.  His passport is French, but carefully doctored with the appropriate visas, carefully inserted into a database to match.  His stop in Montreal being sold as a quick one to see friends before moving to his new country.</p><p>(He’d almost said family - it would have sold better to Customs he was sure - but he wasn’t sure he could say the word without his voice cracking).</p><p>He meets the old man, Harry, outside the bodega, a familiar corner based on too much watching, observing.  Hours of video makes this place familiar, makes the man familiar as he eagerly shakes Booker’s hand, hands him the keys to his new business.  Leads him in and shows him around, with Booker having to play ignorant to the fact he knows every corner of this place, has scoped it out as carefully as he would have a potential kill zone.</p><p>He’d sent some of the video he’d gotten before, the small clips with the Freemans, to Copley before he’d traveled.  Suggested that he tell Nile he had a contact who would be able to get her this, get her glimpses of her family if she wants, that could make sure her family would be okay.  Threatens the man with some truths he’d not given up about what happened with Merrick, truths that might make him the target of some new immortal wrath - if Copley dares tell exactly who the contact is. </p><p>He does not want to break the rules, he does not want his family to hate him even more, but this he can do, he thinks.  He was right in telling her that she couldn’t go home again, that she didn’t want to suffer as he had - but not knowing how his family was would have driven him almost as mad as their cries of hatred (why else had he returned home when offered forever?). </p><p>Copley’s response to Booker’s new, carefully secured, untraceable account was just an affirmative that Nile would want anything she could get.  So here he is, wandering through his new, threadbare apartment above his new, humble business which he honestly knows less than nothing about other than what he’s been able to glean from endless hours watching from afar.</p><p>“Thank you” he tells Harry, his voice rough from lack of use, before he escapes to his new life, leaving Booker to his. Then he takes the folder of suppliers and information handed to him - along with a bottle snagged off the store's liquor shelf - upstairs to the armchair in the corner of the room.  His plan, still roughly sketched and in progress, needs him not only to be able to successfully look like he can run this business, but also make the connections he needs to and figure out where he can do the most good - but he has to start somewhere.</p><p>He’s always been good at undercover, after all.  He just needs to think of this as yet another mission.  Long term, embedded, but a mission none the less. It’s so much lonelier without their voices in his ear, knowing that noone will be checking in, waiting for him - but he can do it.</p><p>After all, if the role to play is someone who moved here to escape his past, for a second chance, well, Booker’s pretty sure he can pull that one off.</p><p>He’s got a lot of experience, after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Although I believe Booker would think it a little too on the nose to give him a name that means traitor (although given his emo ways I am sure he'd be tempted), I am not so subtle.  This song is one of the ones on my playlist, and it can be a french last name, so Léonard it was.<br/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eIz23GYZ4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eIz23GYZ4</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Being undercover means not reacting the first time Mrs. Freeman enters his bodega.  He’s been set up about a week, but the traffic in has been a little quieter than he saw on the video.  Those who come in are obviously wary of a new person, of the unknown that is this Mr. Léonard.</p><p>This is fine, because he’s still getting used to interacting with people, talking to people again - he’s spent so long hidden in his room, behind a screen, behind a bottle. Gives him time to get into the groove, working to play bland, harmless. Acting not like he’s waiting for anyone in particular.  Especially when that someone in particular enters his shop for the first time, picking up the same staples he’s seen her pick up before, making her way up to the counter.</p><p>“Bonjour” he says in greeting, voice still rough, before his mind pulls back into the present.  “Hello.” he corrects it to. “Is that all then?”</p><p>“Yes, please” she responds, and he nods, turning to the cash register to add things up, not expecting her to continue.  “I must admit, I never thought Harry was going to sell this place.”</p><p>Booker smiles at that, remembering the excitement in that old man’s face.  “Yes, he told me he was going to go live with his children and her family.  Seemed quite eager to find someone to buy him out.  And I wasn’t about to argue with his choice, given how I lucked out here.”</p><p>“I must admit we don’t get many people from France here Mr …” she probes, and he turns back towards her.</p><p>“Léonard. But if you called him Harry, you can call me Bastien” he responds.  “$9.15 please.”</p><p>She already has a bill ready to hand to him, and he quickly collects her change.
“Abigail Freeman” she tells him, not knowing he’s known her name since long before he came to this city.  That he’s known of her long before he knew her name, in the mournful gaze of her daughter, in the pain he’d helped put there. </p><p>Her chuckle is unexpected.  “Glad to meet you, Bastien. Welcome to the neighborhood. Since you think you've lucked out, I’m sure you’ll be fitting in, in no time at all.“ Her tone has nothing but simple kindness in it, and he doesn’t know why he can’t hide his reaction to that - maybe it’s the reminder of Nile, the tenuous line to his family, ever present - but he knows she saw a hint of the despair in his eyes when he's not quick enough to lower his gaze and hand over her change.</p><p>He tries to cover it with a smile and a nod as she departs, but he’s not quite sure he’s succeeded.</p><p>Because having a mission is helping, but it doesn’t make everything alright.  He still screams himself awake too many nights.  He still doctors his coffee with his flask too much.  Mrs. Freeman catches him at it once, and gives him a disapproving look, but he makes sure the kids don’t see it, especially not Nile’s brother.  That’s as close as he can get to appropriate.</p><p>He doctors up his recordings too, while sipping from the same flask. Making sure he’s not in shot, making sure his voice if it does come through is distorted or hidden, focuses it completely on her family’s visits, on their side of the conversation.  Even if all he’s got of her brother so far is him with his headphones jammed in, wordlessly passing over cash for a Coke or a snack every once and awhile, at least it’s something. Something she doesn’t have. Something she deserves to see, would have seen if immortality hadn’t yanked her from her life.</p><p>He’s getting better at the conversations, with all those that come into his store. Trying his best, knowing that if he’s going to make his mission work - if he’s not going to just observe, but help somehow, protect somehow, he needs to fit in as much as a strange white Frenchman can.</p><p>Surprisingly - or perhaps not - the fact he’d broken just a little in front of her had seemed to help with Mrs Freeman at least.  The conversations extend a little bit longer.  And not just with her.  Nia, who owns the salon next door, becomes a regular fixture in his shop, chatting with him as she comes in for a coffee from the pot as she waits between customers.  </p><p>Other people he had seen on the video and mostly ignored, who come in as regularly as Mrs. Freeman does, ask after Harry but then ask his name.  They are cautious at first, understandably so, but friendly none the less.</p><p>There is a sense of community he hasn’t felt since his youth, even for someone like him, an obvious outsider.  Sometimes he almost forgets he’s on a mission, that he’s alone.  Until he retreats up the stairs to his apartment, bare bones except the furniture Harry left him mixed with the remnants of his former life, and remembers.</p><p>He drags himself to the computer in those moments. Obsessively edits the latest video, to send to Nile.  To make his existence worth something.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I had this idea that the dialogue would slowly start increasing as he has to rejoin the living. We’ll see if it works.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Another thing he also hadn’t expected- though he supposed he should have, was that some strange white Frenchman running a bodega would attract curiosity not just from the locals, from the people he’s trying to fit in with - but also some wrong attention.  It’s late and nearing closing time, and he’s just said goodnight to Nia who has been telling him a story of the extra pressure she’d been getting lately, of her fears of ‘them’ trying to force out the community.  “Gentrification”, she tells him. “Don’t want none.”</p>
<p>He was still busy taking notes to look into this in his notebook, careful and coded to his eyes only, when the door opened with a clatter.  When he looks up to complain, he realizes that this is not the normal hyper kid who doesn’t know how to use a door politely.</p>
<p>These men are impolite by intent, postures intentionally intimidating as they loom into his room.  Pale, shaved head, tattoos, over muscled, everything in their look is obviously intended to create fear.  Including the gun poking out from the waistband of the lead man’s jeans, no attempt to hide it.</p>
<p>It’s a standard intimidation racket, from what he can tell from their blustering words.  He wonders if it’s associated with the issues Nia is having, reminds himself to look into it later.  When he’s not playing a slightly cowed storekeeper, waiting for them to move closer. When he’s not looking forward to for the first time in a long time having something to take out some aggression on.</p>
<p>It’s not that he’s addicted to the fight, but he’s a survivor.  Fighting is what he’s made for.</p>
<p>Not that it’s much of a fight.  A couple of local toughs vs. a trained mercenary with far far too many years experience.  It’s almost a laugh how easy it is to take them out, especially when he’s not at all afraid of the gun being waved at him as long as it stays pointed at him and not at the windows.</p>
<p>By the end they’re crumpled and bleeding but alive, messing up the floor of his bodega, and their gun is a still familiar weight now in his hand.  The only concern is that they were a little bit noisier than he was really hoping for, especially since they never closed the door on their way in and he knows he saw someone else moving out there after they came in.</p>
<p>The fact that it’s Nile’s brother who pops his head in the door and whistles appreciatively kind of ruins the moment of triumph.  “You gonna call the cops then?” he asks.</p>
<p>“Non” he responds, breathing a bit more heavily than he likes (he definitely needs to get back into practice a bit better than this, maybe convert the corner of his apartment to allow him to work out better).  He knows how little the cops are trusted in this neighborhood, for sadly valid reasons, and he doesn’t want to cause alarm.  “I am sure the gentlemen are done here?” he asks pointedly to them both, the appropriated gun still heavy in his hand. </p>
<p>He walks over to the door, holds it open - holds himself in-between the kid and them, just in case - and lets them stumble out.  It may lead to more trouble later, but not as much trouble as killing them on his floor would have brought.  After all, it’s a lot harder to hide the bodies when you’re on your own.</p>
<p>And especially not the best idea to do that in front of one of the people you’re trying to not alarm.  He smiles awkwardly at the kid, keeping the gun behind his back as much as possible.  “Shouldn’t you be at home?” he asks, all it takes to have him scamper off, but Booker doubts that’ll be the last he hears of it.</p>
<p>Sure enough, after that incident, the kid comes in more, actually talks to him now.  Far more than he expected, a little more than he’s comfortable with. </p>
<p>“You did that shit professional style” he says this time, still obsessed with getting him to talk about it, and Booker keeps his grunt non-committal as he hands over the change, waits for the kid to depart.</p>
<p>“Are you still here bothering the man?” comes from the door, and both Booker and the kid flinch. </p>
<p>“He’s not a bother ma’am” he responds as Mrs. Freeman enters his shop, turning to his register to avoid her gaze.</p>
<p>The short noise she makes is obviously disagreement.  He has a funny feeling that she knows exactly what he did, and what.  Whether the kid ratted him out, or whether the community just knows because somehow they know nearly everything that goes on here - except, thankfully, his purpose for being here - well, that he’s not sure.  </p>
<p>“You ever not working?” she asks, putting her carton of milk on the counter.  He shrugs.  What else does he have to do? Even with his current side project - sabotaging the work being done to push the businesses and then he’s sure after that the residents out of area (Nia had been right, though he’d never tell her) - the evenings were still too quiet, the nights too painful.  Why would he need a break.</p>
<p>“You should probably consider getting some help” she suggests, ignoring his shrug.  “My boy needs to learn some responsibility. Would you consider taking him on?”</p>
<p>“You know why he’s hanging around now” he reminds her, now even more sure there’s no way the story hasn’t made it back to her.  “Do you really want him here?”</p>
<p>"I married into a family of soldiers.” she laughs.  “I know one when I see one.  You won’t hurt him.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how to respond to how sure she sounds.  He’s never been that certain in his own ability to not hurt someone as she seems to be.  He's always been so much better at hurting - enemies, family, whether he wants to or not. </p>
<p> It rocks him enough that he can’t figure out how to deny her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As Nile’s brother’s age was never really clear in the movie, I went with ‘mid high school’. She just seemed the oldest sibling type with how she interacted with the others (personal bias perhaps).</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He tells himself that the kid being around more is good.  It’s part of his surveillance, he can provide more information back. Booker learns more about ways he can feed money and support into the Freemans’ lives from Marcus’s idle chatter than he had in the last few months of surveillance.</p><p>Plus, Booker is tired. Always so tired, to the point that sometimes he feels that he’ll be dragged to hell eventually by the weight of it all. Someone else to help do some of the day to day, to keep his cover up, maybe that’s not so bad.</p><p>In reality though, Marcus is way too curious. Asks way too many questions, ones that Booker hasn’t come up with a story for Mr. Leonard for, ones where the real answer is too dangerous - for his cover, for his sanity - to answer.</p><p><em>Where is he from? Where is his family?</em>  France and ‘not here’ do not appease.</p><p><em>Why is someone like you here?</em> This, he has to admit, is a great question, because he’s asked himself it a few times.</p><p>“I made a mistake” Booker responds finally, unable to just not answer that one, before pausing, correcting himself.  “No, I made the wrong choice. Mistake doesn’t give me enough credit for doing it.”</p><p>It makes him maudlin, thinking of what he did, wondering how they are.  He tries not to, even though they still haunt his dreams.  To know he’ll never see Andy again is the greatest punishment he can think of. When he thinks of it, of losing her, It strangles his breath in his throat just as well as that noose did.</p><p>But then, a few years later, it happens. One of the nights he lets the kid out early to go study for his SATs, lets himself take on the duties of sweeping, restocking, things that are starting to calm him. He’s about to shut up for the night when the door opens again, rocking too hard on its hinges, and god he’s going to have to try to start pretending to be older, taking out some punks again is not going to help his reputation but when he turns to see the intruder everything freezes.</p><p>Her hair has the a hint of the silver he’s been trying to start working on the best way to fake, but it’s Andy, it’s his Andy and she’s older but he still feels his heart beat faster when she sees him and the shock is overwhelming.</p><p>“Boss” he says, or he tries to say, but the word comes out wrong and hoarse and god she’s standing right in front of him, his face in her hands, just like she always did when he was coming back to life too slowly, moving too slowly, and he isn’t crying no but his face is somehow wet.</p><p>“Hey Book” she says, and her voice is the same as in his memories, in his nightmares, and he’s surprised his knees don’t give way.  “Got somewhere we can talk?”</p><p>An order from Andy, no matter how casually phrased, will always be enough to get him back to rights - at least for awhile.  “Upstairs.  Just let me …” He doesn’t think he’s closed up this fast in his life,  knowing who is now upstairs in his apartment, who is waiting for him.</p><p>He finds her in his only comfortable chair, living room having by now been mostly replaced by his computer setup on one end and a workout room on the other. His desk chair is nearby though so he drags it over, taking a glass from her that she pours from a bottle of whiskey he doesn’t own.</p><p>“How did you find me?” he asks, and she gives him a distinctly unimpressed look as she sips from her glass. He knows better than that.  “Merde” he mutters, concern rising.  “I told Copley he’d regret it if he told Nile”</p><p>“He didn’t tell Nile” she responds, amusedly.  “But did you really think he’d be able to outlast me?”</p><p>“I didn’t think he’d have to” he admits.  “I didn’t think he’d be around in 100 years.”  The fact that he didn’t expect anyone to ask after him for 100 years was something he’d thought was a given, with what he’d done. The fact that he was the reason Andy wouldn’t be around in 100 years goes unsaid.</p><p>“Is that your subtle way of asking why I’m here within a decade?” she asks, and he’s so close to breaking. He tries to hide it behind another gulp of his drink, as she continues. “Told you to have a little faith, Book.” she smiles, and his laugh is more broken than anything and this time he can’t deny that he’s crying, sobbing as he leans forward towards her.  She lets him, wraps her arms around him, and he’s not sure how much of what’s coming out of him is apologies in every language he can think of, and how much of it is just sobbing, but she lets him have it anyway.</p><p>He doesn’t mean to cry on her shoulder - he’s always been too afraid to show this level of emotion to any of them, especially Andy, but she lets him, and when he finally gets himself back into his chair she just pours him a refill for the drink he spilled all over his floor.</p><p>“So why are you here then?” Booker asks, feeling both hollowed out and yet somehow better. “If you’d prefer me not to be subtle that is, boss.”</p><p>“I told you, I talked to Copley.” She tilts her head at him. “Nile was fine with a mysterious benefactor, was willing to let it be, but I don’t let things be, you know that.”</p><p>He swallows at that, uncertain what to say, and she continues. “He said you’d threatened him to keep this secret.” </p><p>Booker whistles.  “That was foolish of him.  Like you’d let the knowledge he had something to be blackmailed with be”.  His brain spins as he realizes the implications though.  If she knows …</p><p>“Copley told me what the original deal was.” Andy confirms, and he shivers.  At one time, that was all he’d wanted to tell them - that he hadn’t meant it, not like this, not for them. For him yes, but never for them.</p><p>But he knows better now. He’s had enough time to mull over his own mistakes. No, like he’d told Marcus, not mistakes, choices.  “Doesn’t make it not a betrayal, boss.”</p><p>“No, it doesn’t.” she confirms.  “But there’s one thing I can definitely absolve you of at least.”  She moves as fast as he remembers, and the knife in her hand is familiar because at one point it had been his, cutting through her flesh in a way that could almost be symbolic.</p><p>It starts to heal even before he can panic.  Slower than it used to be, slower than he still heals, but it’s healing, and that is all that matters.  He has no more tears left in him, but she knows.  She has to, because she tells him of how it came back, tells him of his family, tells him how Nile lives for what he is able to send.</p><p>They talk late into the night, and he knows she can’t stay, but it still hurts when he’s waiting by the door to let her out.  This hug is unexpected - unAndy - but he’ll take it.  It’s the best he’s felt in years.</p><p>“You should have talked to me Book”, she scolds him as she steps back.</p><p>Ma décision est prise, je m'en vais déserter” he responds, rueful as always.  “I have always been such Andy. Not sure if I know any other way.”</p><p>“You will Book” she tells him.  “Give it time.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Ma décision est prise, je m'en vais déserter<br/>Is from a French anti-war song called, appropriately, Le déserteur (The Deserter)<br/>There was a good angry rock version of it I cannot find, so I give you the original, with translations - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WukbQ9ldsdc - there is something about the line ‘I am not on this earth to kill wretched people’ that just hits you in the feels.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time, he has in spades. The years continue to pass.  Thankfully ways to disguise yourself to look older are getting easier, and it’s surprising how much a pair of old man glasses and not standing so tall go.  A little hitch in one’s step. Growing out your hair so it covers more of your face to hide it, slowly greying it out with dyes, he’s sure there’ll be even more options as the years pass and he’ll keep on top of them all.</p><p>It’s a long term mission, after all.  It always has been.  It won’t fill all 100 years - he can’t disguise that well, and even if he could mortality still stands in his way, as always - but it’s kept him occupied, kept him on track, given him both time to think and not think as needed - longer than he’d thought possible.</p><p>He gets invited to the community barbecues, because somehow he’s considered part of the community by now. Doesn’t cook anything, but brings chips and drinks from his stock that the neighbourhood kids devour. Chats with the parents, with the families.  Stops feeling that bitter twinge in his chest every time he sees the fathers and their sons playing together.</p><p>He finds a local bakery that makes baklava, and starts selling it, even if he knows that she’ll likely never be here again.  Sends off a package, hopefully to find Andy wherever she is - because she broke the rules first so this small slip is he hopes okay.</p><p>Nile’s brother works for him til he goes to college, the happy recipient of a full ride scholarship that Booker of course knows nothing about.  Hires another local kid just coming up to replace him, teaches him to sweep the floor and stock the shelves just like he did the last one.   When Nile’s brother reappears over the summer, he figures out some emergency task that he ‘just doesn’t have the energy to do’.  Keeps him in pocket change to help supplement those ongoing bursaries.  Tells him not to give the new kid too much grief.</p><p>The internship that launches Marcus into his new career has nothing to do with Booker. All the kid’s own natural talent. He doesn’t know why that makes him so proud but it does.</p><p>He learns about his latest successes now from Mrs. Freeman every time she comes in, as she grows greyer. Gains a cane, a slower walk.</p><p>When he hears of her fall and her broken ankle, he hacks his way through her insurance to make sure everything is covered without deductibles, then makes his way to his house with her normal Tuesday bag - milk, oranges, bread.  The fond look she gives him as she answers his knock is one he still isn’t used to.  He’s learned where Nile’s compassion has come from over the years, and it doesn’t break him as badly as it used to, but it still aches deep in his chest.</p><p>“Ahh, Bastien” she chuckles, leaning heavily on a crutch.  “You’re a guardian angel sometimes, you know that?”  He looks away at that, as he does at most of her kindness, but at this especially.  He may be learning to hate himself less but he’s still sure angel is the furthest from his truth even now.</p><p>“Can I put these away for you?” he asks instead, and she nods and lets him in.</p><p>"There’s coffee on the stove” she tells him, and he knows by now what she takes in her coffee so he brings her one along with his own, to chat just as they have most Tuesdays for decades now.  Though this is the first time it’s been in her house.  It feels more personal somehow.</p><p>“How’s Marcus doing?” He asks, a safe topic.</p><p>“Good, good. Off doting on his fiancé, but still makes sure to visit his mom on the regular “</p><p>“He’s a good kid.” Booker nods, sips slowly at his coffee. “Still don’t understand why you trusted enough to let him work with someone you barely knew.”</p><p>“I knew enough.”  He raises an eyebrow at her, and she smiles softly in return, her gaze moving to a picture on the mantel. His gaze follows. Two photos are displayed carefully, prominently.  Two figures, shoulders straight, dressed in matching uniforms -  though he only recognizes the one.</p><p>“My husband was a soldier.” she tells him.  “He died when Marcus was a baby. I feel that loss every day.  I saw that same loss in your eyes.”  His breath catches in his throat at that. “Or am I wrong?”</p><p>He could deny, he could change the subject.  ‘Not here’, and all that.  But he can’t, not in the face of her honesty. “My wife.” he admits, and then because there are two photos up there, he has to add it. “My sons.”</p><p>She nods, sympathetic, before leading his gaze back to the mantel. “My daughter" she responds, and he takes that permission to look closer, to stare at Nile as he’s never seen her, in uniform starched and tucked - so proud, and so young.</p><p>“Too much love. Too much death.” Mrs. Freeman tells him as he stares into Nile’s eyes.  “A man who felt that much loss would not hurt my boy.” </p><p>He can’t help the shudder that runs through him at his words, truer than she’d ever know.  Booker has no clue how to respond to that, and the silence hangs for a minute.</p><p>“I mean you never even once looked at Nia and lord did she try” she continues, breaking the sorrowful quiet with his shock he turns and stares at her.  “Not even a clue. Told her so.”</p><p>He lets her have her amusement at that one. He definitely had not even noticed Nia’s interest, so focused on his mission. And he supposed she was right - also so focused on his pain.</p><p>A pain that he shares in a way with the woman across from him.  He realizes that she’s not been a mission only for years now.  Sees her loss in her, yet sees those shoulders still straight, unbowed with it all.</p><p>She bears her grief because she has to, for Marcus. for herself.  </p><p>It’s a lesson he’s learning later than he should, but he’s learning.</p><p>“I admit I have been an enemy of love for a bit” he shrugs, and she laughs again.</p><p>“Save that accent and such turns of phrases for Nia please” she retorts, ignoring the fact that Nia’s now married as she winks at him, and he can’t help but laugh once again.</p><p>“As you say, Madame Freeman.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The idea of being the ‘enemy of love’ is stolen from the real Mr. Leonard, because I will never have his turn of phrase.  I needed some lyrics from The Traitor in here, after all.</p><p>And yes this entire story came out of the idea of this conversation.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Over fifty years after he moved to Chicago, his primary mission comes to its end.  He’d a few years earlier had to sell the bodega, to fake illness and a reconciliation with lost family to escape, to move somewhere near enough to monitor but not near enough to get caught, but he still does his duty. Disguises only could go so far.</p><p>He cannot be near when she dies, and he doesn’t just regret that for Nile’s sake, but also his own.  He can, however, attend the funeral whose costs had been, he knows, much less than Marcus had been expecting to have to pay.</p><p>He owes her that much, though he stands at the back. His hair might be dyed darker, his beard thick, his sunglasses bold enough to help blur Marcus into not recognizing him, but he doesn’t want to push it. </p><p>But he has to go and give his condolences in person, head bowed both out of respect and to help hide his face. It’s only right. He owes her that much. So much.</p><p>“My uncle spoke of her” he tells Marcus.”He said she helped save him.” Truth, as much as he can give.</p><p>“You look a lot like your uncle”, Marcus tells him in return, no longer a kid but instead a pillar of his community, like his mom. “He was a good man.”</p><p>“Thank you” Booker responds, voice hoarse with grief, and he means every word. Too few people know him as a good man. He’s glad here someone does.</p><p>He waits a little longer before making his way through the graveyard, around the mausoleums, until he’s stopped by the figure he’d seen watching the entire thing from a distance.  Her hair is short and curly now but her eyes are as he remembers, even so full of pain.</p><p>“Ah chérie, you should not be here alone” he can’t help but exclaim. </p><p>“I’m not”, Nile responds, and throws herself at him as she crumbles.</p><p>He leads her, not to the bench that is nearby, but to his car because he doesn’t want to risk Marcus seeing her.  Too much death surrounds him right now, he doesn’t need more.  Nile is silent as he drives off, stays silent until they reach their destination. </p><p>“It was you, wasn’t it? Not some nameless contact, but you all along?” She asks him, after she’s back in his apartment, away from the death, away from her family yet again.</p><p>He nods, and watches her pace across the room in response.  She seems uneasy, uncertain, not how he remembers her at the beginning, at the end. Whereas Booker, well he’s come to feel more certain in his own skin over these years, welcomed and understood in ways he had never expected. Understanding himself better without the distraction of battle, of booze. The fact that the majority of Booker isn’t the deserter, the traitor, it had taken many years for him to figure out.  </p><p>But that doesn’t mean part of him won’t always be that, that his fear and pain and that underlying sadness won’t always lurk as his shadow.  That doesn’t mean he should be forgiven yet. Still, it is nice to have her here, to see someone from his family again after so many years.  Even if she is way more on edge than he’s ever seen her.</p><p>But then, death does that to you.  He should know.</p><p>Finally she turns to him, eyes still wild. “I don’t care about what happened in London. You fucked up, but that’s not for me to judge. You did this though, and that is mine to judge. Why?”</p><p>In that moment it reminds him of Marcus, always asking him why? as he swept the bodega floor.  It reminds him of his son, begging for his help, screaming why.  There is so much that he could use to answer her. To answer them.</p><p>In the end, it’s the simplest truth that matters though, and all he truly has to give.  “Because to see them would have killed you, but to not see them would have done the same.”</p><p>She laughs, a bitter edge to it that is new to him, and he wonders which decade added it to her voice. Which death.  “Kind of hard to kill me, Booker.”</p><p>“Killed your soul then, if you prefer. “ he tells her, staring her down, willing her to listen.  Its only fair - it was her own mother who taught him this.  “You have one still and it’s worth keeping. Trust me on this. Once it dies, you would do anything to join it.”</p><p>He’d done anything. He’d done the worst thing. He would know.</p><p>She collapses again, and he goes down with her.  Holds her as she sobs.  And as she does, he tells her the stories he couldn’t send before.  Stories that would have given away who was the storyteller.  Of years of chats with Abigail, both before and after that day in her living room. Of answering Marcus’s incessant questions, watching him grow and learn. Of a life he would have given anything to allow her to have, and what he’d learned trying to give what he could.</p><p>Tells her stories of his own past, his own family, when he runs out of ones of hers.  Tells her stories none of the others have ever heard.  Talks until his voice goes hoarse and her eyes are dry again.</p><p>“Pretty sure your soul isn’t dead Booker” she finally tells him when his words run dry.  “Just deserted you for awhile.”</p><p>“Peut-être” he whispers, to himself more than her, before helping her back to her feet.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There is a lyric in Le Deserteur - When I was a prisoner, they took my wife, they took my soul, and my dear past - and yeah. Hi Booker!</p><p>Depression makes you feel like you haven’t a soul left in you sometimes, and I can only imagine that’s even more true for almost 200 years of it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He suggests Nile should go back to Europe, back to home, back to where the others can support her. Nile suggests that he could go with her, his duty done, his penance paid.</p>
<p>How is his duty done? Marcus still remains, and yes he’s successful but it’s still not a surety he’s safe.  And then there are the others, the ones she doesn't know about.  The boy who replaced Marcus in his shop now the man owning the shop, which always seems to be surprisingly profitable and unbothered by new threats of gentrification.  Nia’s kids and their scholarships, because just because he never saw her interest doesn’t mean he never saw her need for their success.  </p>
<p>He even feels responsibility for the community fund, which he has never ‘officially’ run but Mr. Léonard may have suggested it to the right people once upon a time, and his new identity has been working as a consultant on where best to invest for it, and he makes sure it doesn’t falter.</p>
<p>More importantly, how is his penance paid? He appreciated her care, her compassion, even more so now that he knows so intimately where it comes from - but she is not the one who has to recover from the fact that he took 200 years of pain over 200 years of comradeship and burned them all. </p>
<p>When Andy had told him all those years ago that all Nile had wanted was an apology, he’d laughed, even in his pain.  It was nice to see some things hadn’t changed.</p>
<p>“Non” he tells her, even as he has to stop himself from trembling at the very thought.  “I have 42 years, 1 month and 14 days left to go.”  </p>
<p>“The fact you can count it to the day says a lot, Booker.” Nile retorts, but the fact that it still aches in his bones doesn’t make a difference.</p>
<p>He shakes his head, and she steps back. Her voice this time is slightly broken, and oh he didn’t want that for her, the point of this was to avoid it. “Could I at least stay a bit? It feels wrong to leave so soon after ….”</p>
<p>“Bien sûr” he responds. “Of course Nile. Whatever you need.”  This is a rule he can break.</p>
<p>She’s exhausted, obviously worn out, and he gives her his bedroom, his bathroom, an old shirt and jogging pants which are sure to be laughingly big on her, some towels.  Lets her rest while he returns to his computer to wait.  Sleep is easier for him nowadays, finally with a scarcity of nightmares, but it still eludes him many nights, and he knows this will be one of them.</p>
<p>Because her words still echo in the room. Her offer, kind and terrible at the same time. </p>
<p>The thing is, Booker knows there is a world where he didn’t really survive this exile.  A world where after Quyhn left him, after her presence in his dreams left him, the fact that he was now well and truly alone and cast adrift from his friends, his family … well, Booker knows he knows it could have broken him completely.  He’d felt it, lurking at the edges, those first few nights when there was still nothing but despair in him.  Dreams of constant dying seeming almost better than the alternative of having no one. </p>
<p>Hard to imagine, given what those dreams had helped make him do - but oh, he knows it could have been true.</p>
<p>He also knows that there’s a world where Nile is right, and they would take him back early.  There is a world where forgiveness exists for him.  He just doesn’t know if it’s this world.  He’s not even sure if he wants it to be.</p>
<p>But he does know this. Once she’s ready, he can show her everything he has on her family - past and present.  The videos of her brother, his pregnant wife, the niece she will soon have (even if they don’t even know it’s a girl).  The childhood videos of her and her family he’d managed to glean by perhaps hooking into their computer one of the times he was in her old house. </p>
<p>He can even bake her the casserole that Abigail had brought to nearly every picnic, a taste of home.  He’d been bold enough once to ask for the recipe - he’s not much of a cook, but it was something he could make sure wasn’t lost, so he’d done it. </p>
<p>He can share with her what he can of her family, try and cushion that loss so it won’t ache like his own.  He’ll never completely stop that hollow feeling in her chest - he doubts anything could do that.  But the ache of it, constant and burning, that he hopes he can in his little ways keep from gaining ground.</p>
<p>He could say with good experience that no one needed that feeling in their heart.  It ate more than you knew.</p>
<p>Booker brings up the right screens, cues up the right clips while she sleeps.  He knows she will ask about the bodega camera that sits open, constantly, on the corner of his screens, where Bo will be opening up the store, like he had, like clockwork.  He knows she will see the baklava still prominently displayed on a shelf on the counter, a significance the others have to have taught her by now.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know what he’ll say, when she asks. </p>
<p>He’s not sure what that says about him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Someone wrote a fic with Booker singing Mad World (https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264656)  and that instantly went on the Old Guard playlist, and had me imagine a world where ‘dreams in which I’m dying are the best I ever had’ - and I actually could see that world existing as a possibility for Booker, because at least it was some sense of connection.  </p>
<p>Far too dark for me to handle writing right now, but it had to make it in here.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nile finally leaves him, reluctantly, after hours spent scrolling through what he has gathered, the knowledge that it’s carefully preserved and saved in places so she can continue to hold onto it, to upgrade it onto the latest media, to have a little piece of her past wherever he goes.   </p><p>He wonder what his life would have been like, if he’d been born in this era. Whether it would have hurt more or less to have these pieces of his past, when the only memory in his head to compete with that was of hatred, vs. the love that still remains with Nile. </p><p>But even with that anguish as his lasting memory, he can’t help but love them still. His wife, his sons, they still hold too much of his heart, and he knows that they loved him before they were hurt by what he had and could not share.  </p><p>He can’t imagine that time is ever going to fully heal that wound, even if these past years have finally worn the edges off.  </p><p>It’s why the thought of forgiveness is so hard for him to think of - to be forgiven, he feels lost like he has to be fully, unapologetically sorry.  And he’s sorry for what happened, that his betrayal had spiraled and he regrets the pain he caused so much, - but he also knows that part of him will never be able to apologize for trying to find a way out of hell.   There’s no cure for what ails him, and death had seemed as close as he could get.</p><p>The fact is that it had taken living among mortals to make him realize that death is not the right option.  Every time he feels himself slipping, he can hear Mrs. Freeman in his head, one long conversation near the end of his stay, one hesitant conversation into loss and longing after she’d refused to move from her home to get extra help (he’d discreetly gotten ads for a home care worker into Marcus’s inbox the next day).</p><p>“If I’m still here, someone remembers.” she told him, hand trembling on her walker - emotion or age, he can’t tell.  “They deserve that, don’t they? To be remembered by someone who loves them?”</p><p>Loves, not loved. It said so much.  It said as much that it was the one conversation he hadn’t shared with Nile.  It hit too close.</p><p>He goes out for a walk, later that day.  Takes his flask, still a constant friend (though a very much less used one) to Abigail’s grave.  She’d have glared at him for it, but he’s tipped its contents into her coffee cup a time or two as well, over the years.  Tips a drink into the ground instead.  Places the bouquet that he bought at a bodega across the top of the stone.  Talks to her about his day, about her daughter.</p><p>“Merci, madame.” he tells her at the end, as if thank you would ever be enough.</p><p>Takes his time as he wanders out down the street, somber as he passes the tombstones. All are equal in the eye of death. Even poor immortals like him, he supposes, suddenly aimless.  Because yes, he has work yet to do, but none of it requires him being here anymore, not with the resources he has.  Technology lets him move.</p><p>He wonders if France is as wonderful - and painful -  as he remembers it.  </p><p>He wonders if he’ll be able to find their graves anymore, or at least a close approximation.  To bring flowers to his wife. To drink with his sons.  He doubts it, but it could be worth the try.  For the first time, he thinks it would be worth it.  To talk to them once again. To mourn not in despair and drunkenness, but with some small fragment of the man they remembered, that they’d loved once.</p><p>With that thought in his mind, he heads home.  Takes his time on the way, enjoying the bustle of the city, browsing in stores, pausing on street corners.  Now that he has a next step roughed out in his head, there is no rush in him.  He has all the time in the world, after all.</p><p>Or at least he thinks so, but as he turns the corner towards his apartment, he sees them.  Standing in front of his building, waiting.  Nicky’s hair is shorter, and Joe’s curls are longer.  Quyhn is tucked under Andy’s arm, so close and so calm that he barely recognizes her. Nile is gesturing wildly at the building, and they’re all looking at her with affection. Until they notice, and now they’re looking at him.</p><p>He’s suddenly not slow but frozen, unable to keep moving.  42 years, 1 month and 6 days. He was supposed to have time. He was supposed to be ready. (He was never going to be ready).  He was supposed to wait it out, til forgiveness was not an issue and penance would be enough.</p><p>They were not supposed to be here. They were not supposed to look at him with kindness as they approached.</p><p>They were not supposed to love him still. No matter how much he might have wanted them to, or how much he’d spent years denying that love.</p><p>And yet, by their faces as he finally, slowly approaches them, bags trembling in his hands, they just might.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>To me there is no full villain within the old guard themselves - neither Booker for what he did his despair, or the others by sending him away.</p><p>Neither choice is to me a good one, but good people make bad choices everyday.</p><p>You'll do anything to escape that hole. And you can't help someone who is in such a hole if you are afraid for yourself at the same time.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He asks them why, at first. Not because he doesn’t trust them when they welcome him back, not because he hasn’t learned to live with himself, but because he thought he understood why it isn’t the right time.</p><p>“Because you do understand” Joe says, and he knows Nile has shared his careful refusals, his explanations when she asked him to come.</p><p>“Because we love you”, Nicky adds, and he remembers when that love reminded him only of loss.  But Booker and loss are old friends now. They can coexist, if not always in peace, at least without the endless pain.</p><p>Copley’s successor isn’t as close to that loss, isn’t as burned as he is.  Is able, with Nile’s help, to find things he had never dared to let himself look for, and find an approximate location for where his family would have been buried.  No exact tombstones, but a record, a location.  </p><p>And, bless the Catholic Church for once, their records extended beyond the cemetery. Births, marriages, deaths, all recorded by the priests even in a poor parish such as theirs, his wife’s piety providing an unexpected benefit.  His children, his wife, recorded on paper, scanned paper, saved in as many ways as Nile’s photos.  Their names to carry with him always.</p><p>“I don’t remember my family”, Andy tells him on their way to France. “Or my first love. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”</p><p>Booker doesn’t know either.  Would it have been better for him, to blur those edges earlier? Or would he have hated himself more for remembering nothing but the end, the pain?  He’s not sure.  Would he have been able to move on, without the ability to truly remember what he was moving on from? He doesn’t think so.</p><p>Yet here he is, with his family, visiting his family.  </p><p>They leave him alone, let him go the last little while without them.  He takes his flask, he takes his flowers, and he talks to them, tears still in his eyes, pain still in his heart, but there’s more than pain now.  There always had been more than pain, he now knows, if he’d been able to take a step back and see it.</p><p>When he is done, he wipes his face and turns back to where the others are.  Joe and Nicky stand together, as always, with Nile at their side as they chat.  Quyhn walks quietly through the gravestones. And Andy, his Andy, waits at the end of the row for him, watching Quyhn with an expression on her face he’d never thought to see there.</p><p>He’d thought he was saving her, saving himself.  The pain, the sadness, had made him truly believe it. Seeing her now, he knows that sorrow had lied to him.</p><p>“You know it took hundreds of years before I found her, right?” she comments as he steps up beside her.  “Rubbish timing, compared to some, but then there she was”.</p><p>His laugh is still hoarse, face still wet with his own tears, but talking about other love no longer kills him inside. “So what, you figure I was just too impatient?” he asks her.</p><p>“Maybe so Book.  Guess we’ll see.”  The fact they’ll be there to see it together, a year or 40 years or one hundred years later, well, the fact of that is a certainty in her voice that makes his heart ache, but in a different way. A better way.  He’ll never be rid of the sadness, not completely, but he thinks he can live around it now versus letting it control him.  With their help.</p><p>“On verra bien” he agrees, as they move to join the others.  It would be enough, he thinks, to try.  </p><p>It would be worth it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>On verra bien = we will see.  Because he will now.   Hopefully.</p><p>But yes.  Thank you for sticking with me through this.  This is only the second fanfic I’ve written in enough years that I’m embarrassed to say how many years it really is.  I hope you enjoyed.  </p><p>I am of two brains as to where this story can go from here, but definitely plan on more - just not sure if I will do one (or both, because I'm indecisive). In the meantime I have a hopefully less intense non sequel one to get out while I try to decide.</p>
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